


Letting go and looking forward

by Pearlislove



Series: Mamma Mia oneshots [7]
Category: Mamma Mia! (2008), Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018)
Genre: Drama & Romance, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen, Mamma Mia 2 spoilers!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-18 04:38:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15477855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pearlislove/pseuds/Pearlislove
Summary: Ruby and Fernado talk about love, loss and Donna Sheridan.





	Letting go and looking forward

**Author's Note:**

> So uh yes I just want to explore Donna and Ruby's dysfunctional relationship, and ship Ruby and Fernando some more. Because I love that shipping. Yup. 
> 
> Lyrics from Andante, Andante by ABBA
> 
> In this fanfic, I assume that Donna died of something akin to a heart attack- quick and sudden - in order for certain things to make sense.

_I'm your music, I'm your song...Play me time and time again and make me strong” Carefully, Ruby laid down her red cried toddler on her bed. “Make me sing, make me sound...Andante, Andante, tread lightly on my ground.” She finish singing, rubbing carefully at her baby’s chubby belly and trying to keep her calm. "I love you, my Donna." Ruby smiled, laying down on the pillow next to her tiny daughter. The big, curious eyes looked at her, and her month old child gurgled._   
  
_Ruby laughed. "That's right. Mommy is here. And she loves you!" Enchanted, she stretched out a finger, watching as Donna took hold of it with both her tiny fists, refusing to let go. She smiled. "You got a strong grip, and you're going to be a very strong person. Just like your dad, and your mum. A strong little Sheridan." Her smile fades, and something deep in Ruby's heart pinched, a dull ache settling in her chest as she thought of her daughters father._   
  
_The man that she left for her daughters sake._   
  
_Not understanding what her mother was saying or feeling, Donna simply gurgled delightedly, squeezing some more at her mother's finger to see what happened._   
_  
_ Ruby felt the tug on her hand and laughed, enamoured with her tiny baby girl.

 _She_ _could never imagine feeling any other way._

* * *

  
  
Ruby wakes up with her arms wrapped around a warm human body. For a moment, still stuck in the confusing haze of sleepiness, she thinks it might be Donna.   
  
Her little daughter, always so clingy when she was little, insisting to sleep in her mother's bed every chance she got long after she should’ve grown out of it.   
  
Ruby opens her eyes, and the illusion break. It's not Donna lying next to her, but Fernando. He is smiling in his sleep, his strong arm wrapped around her waist as she cuddled against his chest. His presence comfort, but it doesn't ease the ache of her heart.   
  
She won a man, but lost a daughter.   
  
She wonders which she'd chose, of she was told to do so. Would it be Fernando, who she'd been missing for so long? Or would she take the chance to bring her daughter back?   
  
Her daughter, who hated her guts until the day she died. Who never ever forgave her for the way she was treated, and died convinced the feeling was mutual.   
  
_Your daughter is dead_   
  
The look on Sky's face as he said it had been indescribable, and Ruby wondered, how much emotions that had shown on hers.   
  
Was there anyone who truly understood how much the hole grandma deal meant to her? Or did they all see her as Frankenstein's monster, trying desperately to do good but failing utterly in the end.   
  
"Ruby" Beside her, Fernando stirr. One of his hands reach for her hair, combing through her blonde strands as she burry deeper against his chest, trying to hide from the reality surrounding her. "What is wrong, mi amor?" He whispers, his other hand rubbing at her back. "Why are you crying?"   
  
"I'm not crying" At the same moment the words left her mouth, she noticed that she was. Salty teardrops were dripping down her cheeks, further smudging yesterday's makeup and she cuddled her lover further.   
  
Fernando laughed softly. "You are, mi amor. Tell me, Ruby, what is wrong?" His voice carries a tone of genuine concern, and suddenly Ruby feels even worse.   
  
A moment ago, she had asked herself she'd choose if it was either him or her daughter.   
  
"I miss Donna." She confess, hiding her face so he won't see how many more tears come with the words. "I miss my daughter." She cries further, scared and horrified.   
  
Beside her Fernando sigh. "She was a beautiful woman. So strong and determined." He reached down and kissed her on the head. "She'd have been proud of you for taking this step."   
  
For the first time that morning Ruby laughed. "She would've chased after me with a pitchfork. And she would never have byed the story that Sophie did. Me wanting to be a proper grandmother? Yeah, right." Frowning, she rolled over to face away from Fernando. He was coming way to close to her raw inner feelings, and she refused to let them out.   
  
She'd kept them hidden deep within her heart for so many years, never wanting herself to be that vulnerable.   
  
"You want to be a grandmother. You want to take care of Sophie. Those feelings are real, Ruby." He lay a warm hand on her back, and she bit her lip. "I will never understood what came between you and Donna." He sigh again, and Ruby tries hard not to cry.   
  
"She was too much like her father. So beautiful and strong...but stubborn too. She held grudges and gave people but one chance. I blew it early on." She rolls over, and Fernando is waiting on her with a patient smile. "I wanted her to forgive me, sometimes. But I knew she never would.” She cries, let the tears slide freely down her face as she close her eyes. “That Sky knew what to say when he came to meet me. You daughter is dead...such a callous thing to just say. But it got me in the helicopter.”

 

“Sky only means well. All he knows of you is what Donna and Sophie has told him. He does not know where your heart truly lies.” His hand land in the middle of her chest, in between her breast, and she smiles at him.

 

“I love you” She whispers, bending over and kissing him. “I’m lucky to have you.”

 

“I love you  too, mi Amour.” He kiss her back, but when the kiss has ended, he pulls back, and she can tell that he is not done talking about the subject that she had first breached.

 

Donna

 

“I don’t want to talk about it.” She looks up at the ceiling, frowning definitely. “It’s my daughter. It’s up to me if I want to talk about her.” She protest before he can, knowing what he was going to say before he said it.

 

“And doesn’t the father get a say in it? You can’t make a child on your own.” He looks at her, a humorous smile on his lips that quickly fades when she doesn’t mirror it. As she begins to pull back, he grabs her face, holding it tightly between his palms. “Ruby...Ruby, please, Tell me. Who is Donna’s father?” He look her deep in her eyes, and somehow, she knows that he knows. Forty five years too late, he realized why she ran.

 

Panic groups Ruby and she begins flailing about, moving her limbs and pulling at his hands, all too desperate to escape his iron grip. “How...how could you know?!” She sits up, trying and failing to breath as  suffocating fear squeezes her guts. “I never told anyone! Never! It was my secret and my secret alone” Crying seems to be the only thing she does anymore, and yet she continues. Every word comes with fresh tears and she sobs desperately, wondering how things could have gone so wrong.

 

“Ruby calm down!” In a sudden fit of frustration, Fernando grip her arm far too hard, trying to pull her back down against the bed. It hurts, but she fights, refusing to lie down. “I didn’t, Ruby. Not until I saw you standing next to Sophie. And even then, I couldn't have been certain...not unless you’d told me.” He ease his grip, suddenly a lot gentler as he stroke her bare skin instead, letting his finger travel across her back and settle at her waist. Embarrassed by the way he acted, he tries to be patient and kind. “I only knew Donna for a year, but I liked to call her mi hija. My daughter. From the moment I met her, she reminded me of myself. Until yesterday, I couldn’t have know how true that was.”

 

“I should have told you! I should have just said it - I’m pregnant... But I was so scared...I didn’t think it could work” She looks at him, and she’s pretty sure she looks a bit scary because he pull back. She looks away again and the embarrassment burn in her soul but she can’t stop. “We could have been happy, a perfect family...but I decided to run. A lifetime of misery, beginning right there.” She smiled her most bitter, self-deprecating smile, curling into a tiny ball on the bed. “It went so fast, anyway...Donna was born early, by two hole months. Always too eager, always moving too fast, that was my Donna. It figured nine months would be to long for her to wait to meet the world.” She smile as she remembers the birth her daughter, but it turns into more tears as she remembered that the girl she had birthed was now dead and gone.

 

“I wish I could have known her better. A year is no time in knowing someone so precious.” Fernando whisper quietly, his arms pulling her closer, planting a kiss on her cheek. “But what is done, is done. All we can do is to look out for the future, mi amor. For Sophie, and for the new baby.”

 

In his arms, Ruby had started to relax. She was comforted by his tender care, but as he mentioned Sophie and her baby, she was thrown back into reality once more.

 

“Sophie! Does she know? Have you told her yet?” As much as she loved the warmth and kisses, Ruby couldn't help but pull back as he cuddled her. A thousand thoughts were still swimming in her head, and she could not relax until they had all been put to rest.

 

Watching her worry herself, Fernando laughed lightly, shaking his head. “I have not yet told her. There has been no time.” He smiles, stealing another kiss from her lips. “Between the party and spending the night with you, I have been occupied.”

 

“Then don’t tell her!” Ruby begs, realising that there is still a chance for her decret to be contained. “Sophie doesn’t have to know.”

 

“She would want to know, Ruby. She deserves the truth.” He laughed once more, dismissing her as though she was nothing more than a silly little girl, and it hurts, because he doesn't understand.

 

It wasn’t he who’d been hiding the truth for over forty years.

 

“If you tell her, I will go. I will leave the island and you...” She tries to threaten, but it falls apart as her broken voice fails to convey the message.

 

“You would not do that, Ruby” He comforts gently, gathering her in his arms and holding her to his chest. She feel hurt, each word inflicting damage, but moments later he repair it. “What is wrong, mi amor? Why do you not want Sophie to know? You know Donna would have wanted you to be honest with her daughter.”

 

“Donna would have wanted me to stay away from her daughter” Ruby laugh, and for once it feel somewhat good. “Maybe I really should…”

 

“Maybe what you really need to let go of is her, mi amor.” He looks at her sadly, swiping away tears from her cheek. “As much as I hate to say it, Donna is dead, and I won’t let her ghost throw shade upon our happiness.” He takes her head in his hands, and kiss her tenderly. “Even if she never wished you happiness, don’t you at least think she would have wished for _me_ to be happy?” He smiles and she nods, enchanted by the look in his dark eyes.

 

 _Yes_. She knows Donna would have - such a generous, kind hearted person as her Donna would not have wished ill upon anyone.

 

In the back of her head, swimming among memories of her daughter, Ruby hears a song from long ago in her youth. And as Fernando hold her close, she begin to sing.

 

“Take it easy with me, please, touch me gently like a summer evening breeze...Take your time, make it slow” She smile, her arms wrapping around his neck as she comes closer to him. “Andante, Andante, just let the feeling grow” She peck him on the lips and lean her head on his shoulder.

 

“Make your fingers soft and light, let your body be the velvet of the night... Touch my soul, you know how” With a single move, her lift her off the bed, sending them both spinning around the room. “Andante, Andante, go slowly with me now” He guide her expertly, her nightgown fluttering in the breeze as they danced across the worn wooden floors. They move at their own pace, every motion instinctive and passionate, and she’s lulled into a land of dreams, far away from the reality.

 

The more they dance, the deeper she is pulled in, memories fluttering around in her head until the scene changed before her eyes.

 

_I'm your music, I'm your song, pay me time and time again and make me strong_

 

“Mommy, mommy dance with me!” Donna’s tiny hand grab on to hers, and she lead her around the room, twirling her glitter covered toddler as one of her LPs plays softly in the background.

 

 _“_ I am your music and I am your song!” The little girl’s singing was false and off-beat, but delighted as she danced around the room and sang along with her mothers recorded voice.

 

They continue spinning one lap after another and the soft, tiny hands of a child grow into the rough, callous fists of an adult woman, throwing her face to face with someone Ruby had never met.

 

Her daughter, looking the way she does posing in the photos that Sophie had happily shown her. A grown up Donna that Ruby never got to see, starring her deep in the eyes with that strange look she always gave her mother.

 

Ruby wasn’t even invited to the funeral, and even if she had been, she didn’t think she’d have shown up.

 

_Your daughter is dead_

 

“I’m sorry, Donna. I tried, I did, but I couldn’t do it.” She squeeze her daughter's hands, clinging to them in desperation, and she wished that it was all real. That she had actually been given the chance to apologise for all those years between them.

 

“Schh” A single finger, pushed against her lips to make her keep quiet. Then, her daughter moved her hand to stroke her cheek instead. “There's a shimmer in your eyes, like the feeling of a thousand butterflies...please don't talk, go on, play, andante, andante...And let me float away” Donna sings so beautifully, and Ruby feels the grip she still hold on one of her hands loosening.

 

Donna is letting go, trying to tell her to do the same.

 

“No! No, Donna, wait!” But Ruby isn’t ready, and instead of letting go, she pulls her closer, holding her daughter her chest. “I love you. I love you so much. I’m sorry” She bow her head, resting it against her daughter shoulder as time started moving forward again.

 

_Andante, Andante...Oh please don't let me down..._

 

She open her eyes and she’s back in reality, caught up in Fernando’s strong embrace and carefully dancing her way around their tiny bedroom. She’s not sure if she fell asleep or what actually happened, but she feels at peace.

 

“How do you feel, mi amor?” He smile at her, kissing her forehead as he keep their bodies pushed closely together.

 

“Good” She replies, thinking about Donna’s calloused hands and her soft voice  as she wished for her mother to move on. Yes, it still hurt, but it was good. She had Fernando, and she was going to make it. “So good.” She reach up, and she kiss him lovingly.

 

Fernando smiled knowingly. “It makes me happy to hear, Mi amor”  He kiss her back, and she feel comforted as his hands plant themselves on her hips  and she tug at his collar.

 

Donna was gone, but she was not alone, and it was going to be alright.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments are appriciated! <3


End file.
